A Crime Called Freedom the Writings of Os Cangaceiros

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Title: A Crime Called Freedom: The Writings of Os Cangaceiros (Volume One)Author(s):Os CangaceirosDate: 2006

Foreword Introduction to Un Crimine Chiamato Libert Chapter 1. Chronology Chapter 2. Editorial Notes From Os Cangaceiros #2 Slip the moorings! The Universal History of Desperation Fanatics of the Apocalypse We, the Cangaceiros Chapter 3. Prisoners Talking Blues Chapter 4. Freedom Is the Crime That Contains All Crimes Chapter 5. The Truth About Some Actions Carried Out In Support Of the

Prison Revolts

Chapter 6. Nothing Human Is Achieved In the Grip Of Fear Chapter 7. Industrial Domestication: Industry as the Origin of Modern

Domination

Factories modeled after prisons Imposing industrial logic Savagery always returns Puritans scum The Campaign to Civilize the Poor Ready to Take to the Barricades Chapter 8. 13,000 Escapes: A Dossier Against the Project 0f 13,000

Places

Preamble Chapter 9. Chronology and Correspondence of a Struggle Against French

Prisons (April 1989-November 1990)

Letter Attached to the Dispatch of the Plans About the Translator FootnotesOs Cangaceiros

A Crime Called Freedom: The Writings of OsCangaceiros (Volume One)

Os Cangaceiros was a group of delinquents with nothing but contempt for the self-sacrificial ideology practiced by specialists in armed struggle. This uncontrollable bandof social rebels wreaked havoc on the French state by attacking the infrastructures of

oppression, supporting popular revolts, stealing and releasing secret blueprints for high-tech prisons, raiding the offices of corporate collaborators, and creating their lives in
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complete opposition to the world based on work. This volume, translated by WolfiLandstreicher, is the first collection of the writings of Os Cangaceiros in English.

Foreword

The book you are reading is a labor of love. I first saw a few translations of writings bythe French group Os Cangaceiros about fifteen years ago. They were intriguing and Iwanted to know more. It was clear that this was not another militant group of specialistsin armed struggle. They had nothing but contempt for the self-sacrificial ideology andpractice of militancy promoted by such groups. Several years later, I learned that OsCangaceiros was a group comprised of delinquents who were caught up in the spirit ofthe French insurrection of 1968 an insurrection that was not just a student revolt, asthe media has tried to portray it[1], but that encompassed the whole of French society.The group came together in Nice in 1968. Taking the well-known graffiti Never work,ever! to heart, they began creating their lives in opposition to the entire world based onwork and thus constantly risked prison. They traveled all over Europe, participating inrevolts throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, their experiences withthe judicial and prison systems led them to focus attacks there. Most of the materialhere relates to their anti-prison activity. I find the ideas they express particularlyinteresting because they combine the best aspects of a non-dogmatic (and non-workerist) class analysis with a critique of civilization that is not at all primitivist, forminga fierce theoretical weapon for use in the social war against the ruling order.

Unfortunately, very few of the writings of Os Cangaceiros have been translated fromFrench into English. Of these few translations, some seem rough, and others are mereexcerpts, sometimes out of sequence. I do not know French, so I was pleased whensome Italian comrades published Un Crimine Chiamato Libert, a book which bringstogether a number of the texts relating to Os Cangaceiros anti-prison activity. In thatbook, it was mentioned that various anarchists had translated other material from OsCangaceiros into Italian. I asked the Italian comrades to send me this material as well.The book you hold in your hands consists of all the texts that appeared in Un CrimineChiamato Libert (except the bibliography) and a few other texts that I felt would fithere. Some of the texts from the Italian already existed in English in rough andsometimes incomplete form. I used both the rough English and the Italian translationsfor the English versions printed herein. In addition to the material from Un Crimine..., Ihave included the Editorial Notes from Os Cangaceiros#2 as translated from theItalian version that appeared inAnarchismoas Francia. Os Cangaceiros. This text givessome idea of social changes that happened in France in the late 1970s and early 1980sthat explain why prison became a greater risk for the underclass at the time. I alsoincluded two texts that had already appeared in English, Nothing Human Is Achieved inthe Grip of Fear and Industrial Domestication. The latter text helps to clarify some ofthe ideas already present in the anti-prison texts by examining the rise of industrialism,

pointing out the prison-like quality of the first factories, which were designed for thedomestication of the poor. I did some editing on these two texts to make them readmore smoothly and fit the style of the others more closely. The endnotes that are signedWL are notes that I added. The rest of the notes were already in one of the otherversions of the text. I have translated some writings by people in Os Cangaceiros aboutmillenarian revolts as well. These will appear in a separate volume, also published byEberhardt Press.

I didnt translate these texts merely for the joy of seeing writings that have inspired meprinted in English. I hope they will provoke discussion aimed at creating an anti-politicalpractice of struggle against prison and the society that creates it, a practice that goesbeyond the current charity and social welfare-style practice of prison support to genuine

revolutionary solidarity. This would be the greatest joy.
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Wolfi Landstreicher, November 2005

Introduction to Un Crimine Chiamato Libert

For some time now, a renewed interest in everything that relates to prison and the living

conditions inside it has been spreading within the so-called movement. Bulletins,websites, committees, actions and initiatives of struggle flourish. Beyond motives thatare more contingent (judiciary investigations and arrests) and political (often, due to thelack of any projectuality through which to experiment with understandings and findaccomplices, all that remains for comrades to share is the misfortune of prison, reducingdifferences to zero), the main reason why the anti-prison critique rouses such sincereattention is quite simple, almost a banality: it is easier and easier for anyone to getlocked up within the walls of a prison. And not only due to a generalized repressiveresponse that the state might make to the radicalization and growth of social struggles,since this is the outcome of the same social, economic and technological progress thatmanifests itself under this disquieting paradox: we could all end up in prison againbecause we all already live in a prison. Nobody excluded.

We could all end up in prison. The triumph of this society of money has caused the livingconditions of millions of people to deteriorate. This throws them into a situation ofprecariousness where only worsening conditions await them. It destroys certaintiescapable of giving any measure of meaning to existence on this earth. It undoes everysocial link that is not economic. It arouses desperation, anxiety and rage. If in the pastthe coldness of an empty heart was partially compensated by the torpor of a full belly,today such an illusion can no longer be put forward. Growing emotional and materialpoverty has isolated the individual in the corner to which the process of socialreproduction confines him. In such a situation it is no accident if more and more peopledemand to participate in the only existing community, that of capital, in the only waythat is conceivable to do so, that of commodity consumption. The siren of advertisingnever sleeps, and it invites everyone to consume more, more and more. And one caneasily imagine what happens when those who are nothing and possess nothing areincited without interruption to have with the aim ofappearing: they stretch out theirhands, tread on peoples toes, have no regard for anyone.

As if this were not enough, the institutional ambition of forestalling every possible way ofescape from a world that is sold to us as the best possible has led to thecriminalization of any behavior other than that of blind acceptance and defense of thesocial order (with all its rules, laws and morals). In its presumption of regulating andcodifying every impulse and every human passion to safeguard the peace of themarketplaces and streets, the law has expanded the field of illegality considerably,creating many new crimes, and thus new criminals, new future prisoners. This is whathas provoked the need for more police, more judges, and more prisons in a notoriousvicious circle that feeds upon itself. It is now sufficient to merely breathe without orderto incur the risk of being locked up inside four walls.

We all live in prison already. In the course of the last few years, the physical structure ofthe prison has been moved farther and farther from our eyes into those outskirtswhere its gloomy presence doesnt end up darkening the gaudy windows of themunicipal center, but fits in perfectly with the squalor of those outskirts. At the sametime, its shadow has started to weigh down more and more over all of us without leavingus alone for a moment. The merit, if it can be called this, is in the introduction of newtechnologies that have allowed an unimaginable leap forward in the sphere of socialcontrol. As with every other technological innovation, the technologies of surveillance,which were tested in prison in order to keep the most riotous prisoners at bay, have

found a civil application. After all, security inside the prisons begins with security outsidethe walls. This explains the startling number of video cameras found in every corner of


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our cities (and even inside buses and trains), the obligatory routes we are forced to takefor our movements, the magnetic detectors that inspect us at the exists of manybusinesses, the identification codes that replace our individuality, the innumerableprohibitions that it is necessary to respect as well as the variegated crowd of guardiansput in place to safeguard the world, in short, all of these things that plague ourexistence. Thanks to the new identification cards, we will not have to be arrested any

more in order to supply our fingerprints. Since we are all potential criminals, we are alltreated as such. Step by step, the entire society is becoming a huge open-air prisonfrom which it is impossible to escape. Aside from realizing the worst totalitariannightmare the one that doesnt even need to send armored cars or patrols of soldiersinto the streets because it has partially replaced them with tiny, less visible technologicalprostheses all this obscures the difference that exists between those who findthemselves behind the bars. Obscures it to such as extent that the very notion offreedom becomes merely a nebulous gradation and, on the other hand, submission tocoercion becomes precise, scientific, concrete and above all normal.

As a contribution to the struggle against the prison society, we have decided to publishthis collection of texts that the group Os Cangaceiros distributed in France. This activity

of theirs that lasted from approximately 1984 to the early 1990s was important,because it managed not to limit itself to expressing a merely theoretical critique of theexistent, but maintained and spread a consequent practical critique.

Named after the Brazilian outlaws who robbed rich property holders while ridiculing thepolice in the late 19th century, Os Cangaceiros was born and developed in a sphere thatstarts from social delinquency and flows directly into revolutionary action. (We recall thatFrance is the homeland of the various Mandrins, Lacenaires, Mesrines...) They wereauthors of a self-named magazine of which only three issues were published. These wererich in analyses and documentation about the violence of the French periphery and thestrikes unleashed to resist the industrial restructuring that was then going on, as well asabout uprisings that occurred in other countries like Spain, Great Britain or South Africa.

They published flyers and manifestos that stood out due to the unusual positions theytook we recall the one in defense of soccer hooligans, after the Heysel tragedyoccurred in 1985. They were also the authors of two books, a broad anthology ofwritings about millenarianism and a diary about a fatal disease that struck one ofthem[2]. And they published a dossier on the new prisons that were being built onFrench soil.

After observing that Delinquency at the beginning of the 1970s expressed a desire forfreedom, a wild turn, a game of bands and how this criminal freedom was brought toan end in the very early 1980s as a result of extremely hard police repression and theblackmail imposed by the reign of necessity, to Os Cangaceiros, all that remained wasto take note of the end of an epoch of thoughtlessness and to prepare for the advent of

an epoch of desperation marked by the return of the dangerous class to the mostuncontrolled rage. We talk constantly about violence; it is our element (and we couldeven say) our daily destiny. Violence is first of all the conditions imposed on us, thepolice defense of them and, unfortunately more rarely, that which we throw back in theirfaces. More gravediggers of the old world than builders of the new one, closer to thepoor and their explosions of violence than to a working class that is ideologicallyassigned a redemptive historical mission, Os Cangaceiros have endeavored to give voiceand reason to the refusal of all the conditions of existence, even when this refusal mightassume especially ferocious forms, with an awareness that certainly couldnt come fromany political militancy, towards which they have always exhibited the greatest contempt,but rather from a genuine dimension of life outside the law, claimed with pride.

In short, these were social outlaws, some of whom had already been convicted ofcommon crimes, all perpetually at risk of being given hospitality in homeland prisons.
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With such a premise, it is needless to say that prisons found declared enemies, whileprisoners found loyal accomplices, in Os Cangaceiros. The revolts that broke out in May1985 in several French prisons provided them with the occasion for demonstrating this.A month later, in June, Os Cangaceiros claimed the act of sabotage against someinstallations of the National Association of the French Railroad in Chtelet-en-Brie, theburning of the tracks of the Nantes-Paris rail line with tires and straw, and the blockade

of the Paris-Brussels trains, the carriages of which were covered with graffiti in favor ofprisoners struggles. As often happens in these cases, also due to the simplicity of themethods used, the idea made headway and started to spread throughout the country.Within a very few weeks, the railroad became the main target for actions of solidaritywith the prisoners; aim was also taken at printing works where some newspapers wereprinted, at the metro, at the cars of some state functionaries, at a company thatexploited penitentiary labor, at cars ofTour de France... Many of these actions remainedanonymous or were claimed by other groups (such as the Support Groups of theImprisoned Rebels, the Friends of Rebellious Prisoners, the Railroad Hooligans, theSupport Committee for the Prisoners, Los Bandoleros...).

The national press, prey to panic, ran for cover, evoking the specter of terrorism and

denouncing the mysterious group that was supposed to have been behind all theseactions. For their part, Os Cangaceiros contemptuously rejected every connectionbetween themselves and a terrorism (a term that they will use without the least traceof embarrassment to indicate the violence of various political armed groups, somethingso much stranger if one considers that they professed themselves to be enemies of thelanguage of the state) in which they saw nothing but the continuation of politics by othermeans, a typical expression ofgauchiste impotence. Their violence was of a verydifferent nature since, as they explained, Our tools of action are those that anyproletarian uses: sabotage and vandalism. We dont do symbolic actions; we createdisorder, as workers in struggle commonly know how to do when they blockade roadsand railroads, sabotage materials, television transmitters, etc... Nothing to do with thearmed struggle fetishism so dear to the militants of various combatant organizations.

Four years later in 1989, Os Cangaceiros took a further step forward in the battle againstthe prison institution. From active solidarity with prisoners, they would go on to directstruggles against the construction of new incarceration facilities. This time, the so-called

Program of the 13,000 would provide them with the opportunity. This was anambitious project that the government launched to completely reorganize the Frenchpenitentiary system. A project that foresaw the closing of the oldest and least adequateinstitution. The restructuring of others and the construction of new, more modernprisons. All under the banner of absolute security to be obtained through massiveemployment of new technologies capable of constantly controlling the prisoner in each ofhis movements in a discreet and aseptic way. The declared aim was to create 13,000new spaces for prisoners (from which the program derives its name) in order to

alleviate overcrowding; the real one was to put the screws to those locked up inside theprisons and to support the mania for justice that was spreading in broad sectors ofsociety.

Os Cangaceiros considered taking up the challenge launched by the French governmentand, starting in April 1989, began a long campaign of sabotage at the construction sitesof the prisons that were being built, along with thefts of blueprints of the buildings at theexpense of the Municipalities and the devastation of the offices of public labor firms thathad obtained the contracts. Among the many actions spread throughout the nationalterritory that, despite being censored by the national press in the instance, were ableto inspire other lovers of freedom we want to recall the lessons taught to the architectChristian Demonchy, who was responsible for the construction of various prisons, on the

public path. After more than a year of sabotage, Os Cangaceiros obtained 10,000addresses of residents in the vicinity of future prisons to whom they sent extracts of a


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voluminous dossier containing dates and information (fruit of their visits in the localesof enterprises involved in the foul affair) about the institutions of punishment that werebeing built.

In November 1990, the complete dossier, Treize mille belles (Thirteen ThousandEscapes) finally came out. Its distribution provoked thousands of polemics and the ire ofthe French government, following the publication of various excerpts in newspapers ofnational circulation. Among other things, the dossier contains accurate technicaldocumentation about the many prisons under construction or in the process of beingrestructured, with general outlines; information about materials used; fixtures; controlsof access, doors and locks; electric and hydraulic systems; sanitation; roofing; andexternal installations. And, above all, there are detailed little maps of every building andits particulars.

The police, who had already begun to intensify their efforts to neutralize Os Cangaceirosin the summer of 1987, perhaps causing in this way the interruption of the groups

public activity, carried out searches in French subversive circles. It seems that themere possession ofTreize mille belles was sufficient to bring one under investigation,

and even the editors of the journal Mordicus, who had dared to publish some excerptsfrom the dossier, had their legal troubles. In any case, it turns out that no one has everbeen tried and condemned for the actions attributed to Os Cangaceiros, who vanishedinto nothing in the early 1990s.

In this booklet, we have collected some of the texts appearing in the second number oftheir magazine, published in November 1985, about the French prisoners revolt of May1985 and the actions of solidarity with them that developed in the following months.Then we have added other texts from the dossier Treize mille belles, among them thechronology of actions carried out against the Program of the 13,000 between 1989 and1990 along with the letters that Os Cangaceiros sent to their victims claiming theactions, the introduction to the dossier and the letter that accompanied its mailing.

With no intention whatsoever of putting forth a new militant position, we hope thatreading these texts can furnish ideas for reflection about possible and practical anti-political prospects for a struggle against the prison institution that is impossible toconceive apart from a struggle against the society that hosts it.

Chapter 1. Chronology

May 5, 1985:

In Fleury-Mrogis, the prisoners of the D4 wing riot and wreck the whole wing.

May 6:

Again in Fleury, 300 people from D1 wing refuse to return from their hour ofexercise; sixty of them set fire to the infirmary.

May 7:

In Bois dArcy, about fifteen juvenile detainees (inmates under 18 years old,usually held in separate blocks or prisons) climb onto the roof, remaining thereuntil May 9, supported and supplied by their fellow prisoners.

May 8:


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In Lille, ten or so prisoners climb onto the roof. In Bastia, inmates refuse to eatprison food in solidarity with the other prisons. (Therefusal of prison food isnot exactly the same as a hunger strike, though this may be one way of carryingit out.)

May 9:

In Fresnes, 400 people climb onto the roofs and clash with cops, who kill oneprisoner. In Compiegne, about ten prisoners climb onto the roofs following thoseof the morning shift. At Bonne Nouvelle in Rouen, about fifty juvenile prisonersclimb onto the roofs while other prisoners wreck their cells; after apparentnegotiations, about thirty climbed back on the roof in solidarity with Fresnes.

May 10:

From the 9th through the 10th, some prisoners went up on the roof in Douai.There was a brief clash with the CRS (French riot police). In Amiens, about fifty

prisoners climb on the roofs. In Nice, about fifty prisoners climb on the roofs. InNice, about sixty prisoners on the roofs join together with about twenty juvenileprisoners during a clash with the cops. In Beziers, 130 prisoners take threeprison guards and one male nurse hostage for several hours.

May 11:

In Evreux, Saintes and Coutances, prisoners climb onto the roofs and clash withcops. The same thing happens the following day in St. Brieuc.

May 19:

Prisoners wreck Montpellier prison entirely (arson and destruction) and clash withcops. Outside, the crowd, consisting of prisoners relatives and friends, attack thecops from behind.

Moreover, numerous disturbances break out in various prisons, with thedestruction of cells and attempts at arson (in Rennes, Angers, Metz, etc.) as wellas collective refusal of prison food (Lyons, men and women in Fleury, Ajaccio,Auxerres, St. Malo, Avignon, Chambery, etc.). There are many suicides duringthis time. Rebels in Douai and Evreux are given heavy sentences on the pretextof damages committed.

June 17:

A barricade is set on fire on the Nantes-Paris railroad line near Nantes insolidarity with the prison revolts.

June 20:

Sabotage of the TGV (high speed train) railroad lines installations in the south ofParis.

June 27:

A barricade is set on fire on the Toulouse-Paris railroad line near Toulouse.


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June 30:

On the night between June 30 and July 1, the printing of the Paris daily papers isparalyzed by sabotage of the IPLO print shop near Nantes. We decided toimpose a half days silence on the national press in honor of the rebellious

jailbirds... The action is also dedicated to all the dead prisoners who weresuicide. All these papers are well known for their hostility to the recentmovement of revolt in the prisons.

July 1:

Sabotage of the railroad installations on the Nimes-Tarascon line.

Each of these actions cause prolonged interruptions of railway traffic and hoursof delay for the daily trains. The demands were always the same:

A reduction of punishment

for all condemned prisoners.

The release of all prisoners awaiting trial.

The definitive stopping of all deportation

measures against immigrants.

The cancellation of sanctions for all the rebels.

July 2:

The Paris-Brussels TEE train is stopped near Compiegne; the four demands arespray-painted on it. Windows are smashed, and copies of the pamphlet FreedomIs the Crime... [see below] are thrown through them.

July 5:

Sabotage on the Paris-Le Havre line. Four people are arrested in Rouen two dayslater and imprisoned for three months in relation to this action.

July 8:

From the 7th to the 8th, prisoners in Chaumont climb onto the roofs,demonstrating their anxiety in the face of the forthcoming presidential amnestyof July 14 (Bastille Day) that promises to be particularly meager. There areconflicts with the cops. Four of the rebels receive heavy sentences.

July 9:

An anonymous act of sabotage is carried out against the Paris-Strasbourg linewhich passes near Chaumont.

July 12:


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In the early morning, two Paris subway lines are blocked for several hours afterheavy objects are thrown on them in solidarity with the Rouen 4 and the rebelsof Chaumont; the four demands are once again publicized.

July 13:

In Lyons, two official cars are set on fire in solidarity with the citys prisoners.Even before the details of the concession are known, various disturbancesresume in various prisons (Fleury, Loos-les Lille, Toul, etc.).

July 14:

At St. Paul prison in Lyons, about twenty prisoners of the psychiatric unit rebel,destroying and burning. The pathetic presidential amnesty is announced: a oneto two month reduction of short-term sentences. The JAP [Judges for theApplication of Penalties] will get out in the next few days. Numerousdisturbances will accompany the news in the countrys prisons.

July 15:

During the night between the 14th and the 15th, tires of the convoy thataccompanies the Tour de France are slashed (immobilizing about one hundredvehicles) in solidarity with the condemned rebels. In Toulouse, a business thatemploys prisoners is destroyed by fire.

August 18:

In Lille, dozens of prisoners climb onto the roofs.

August 18:

In Lyons, the ROP print shop for Parisian daily newspapers is wrecked.Publication and distribution are seriously effected. Once again the aim is tocastigate the papers for their lies and hostility toward the rebels. The text, TheTruth About Some Actions [see below] is left on the premises. To report onceagain, during disturbances in Guadalupa, the escape of about thirty prisonersfrom the Pointe--Pitre prisoner following a revolt.

Chapter 2. Editorial Notes From Os Cangaceiros#2

The function of unions in

the impending class conflict.

The poor in their struggle for

the most elementary survival.

The destruction of domination

as the main aim of the oppressed.

Violence and amazement.


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As one expert recently stated: companies sometimes discover that they are facingnegotiators who, surprisingly, speak the same economic language they do. The mainconcern of the unions is simply to legally ratify, together with the bosses and the state,what has already been going on in practice for some time for example, all the chatterabout work flexibility or the Guaranteed Inter-occupational Minimum Wage. It is nowopenly admitted that unions, businessmen and the state all speak the same language

(only a tiny minority of union activists still cling desperately to the language of theformer workers movement, the praises of which they continue to sing). The period isover in which workers could get anywhere in their struggles by placing themselvesbehind union cover, forcing their delegates to follow them in order to avoid open dissent.

For the first time, in France, strikers have been individually sentenced to paycompensation to scabs and not to their unions. It happened at the beginning of 1985 inthe Delsey establishment near Calais. Then, it happened again in the transport industrywhere fifteen drivers, who were fired following the strike, were sentenced by the Arrascourt to pay 52,600 francs out of their own pockets to seven non-strikers broughttogether in the Association for the Freedom to Work!

Mediations, which have the task of integrating workers, have now gone through anentire cycle. It is now assumed that workers should follow the same logic as their unionrepresentatives and identify themselves completely with the operation of the company.In Great Britain, for example, the American and Japanese businesses that are beingreintegrated into the automobile and electronics sectors impose their conditions.Managers define the new rules for the management of work in close collaboration withthe unions, entrusting them with imposing the rules on workers (in some cases, it is astipulation in which the subordinate voluntarily gives up the right to strike!).

But this progress in the exploitation of labor has had to be accompanied by aconditioning of the labor force, as is done in Japan and South Korea. If factories overthere are true barracks where work is militarized, it is still necessary to impose a

religious cult on the workers. Need and terror are not sufficient to rally enthusiasm forwork in wage laborers, even in Asia. Managers of Japanese enterprises, who act likegenuine cult leaders, have understood this. The enemy cannot organize new forms oflabor with nothing but a barracks regime. It responds to this problem by adding areligious or secular lie. This is what a dynamic entrepreneur in France was expressingwhen he declared, business is lacking a creed.

Capitalists can freely impose the most draconian conditions on the poor insofar as theunique strength of workers in revolt was broken at the start of the 1980s, in the name ofthe crisis. It is a return to the principles of 19th century capitalism: seizing peoplethrough hunger by organizing the spectacle of misery (as happened with thephenomenon of the so-called new poor). In this way, people have had unthinkable

wages and working conditions imposed on them for nearly ten years. The labor force iskept completely at the disposal of employers (the unions euphemistically call this workflexibility), through related additional unpaid hours, Sunday work, wage decreasesimposed through the blackmail of firing and so on. And some enterprises that are goingthrough difficulties even go so far as to appeal to the workers for voluntary participationso that capital is formed from their donation of all or part of their wage! The extremecase happened in Lyons at the start of 1985, when a panel, appointed in extremis as thehead of a factory in difficulty, put forth the donation of two months wages by theemployees as the condition for saving the enterprise. The few that refused did well. Afterthe payments were made, the new manager ran away overseas with the cashbox.

All that crawls upon the earth is subject to being crushed!

The Universal History of Desperation


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the more direct consequences of this state of things and helps to augment it. Now, nomediation is possible between peoples misery and civil society. The revolts that haveoccurred since 1968 forced the enemy to modernize oppression and thus make the worldeven more unlivable and poverty even more visible. The old principle of 1789 returns tothe first position in hostile preoccupations: filling the chasm that has been sodangerously produced between the ruling class and the poor over the last few years.

This is what an entire generation of reformists under state orders are concerned with.Obviously, they only speak the language of the state and preach the democratic lie tothe mass of the poor. The bourgeoisie is brutally confronted with the thing that definesit: the absence of community pushed to its fever pitch by renewed social conditions.

The violence that reigns among the poor, which is sometimes practiced openly amongthem, is equal to the violence of the conditions that constrain them. At the same timethat all the poor fully submit to the rules of the war of all against all, they can no longeraspire to a civilized existence and so become decidedly dangerous. This moment whenseparation has invaded everything also shows us that the poor cannot constitute acollective legal subject like in the period of the former workers movement. Theirdissatisfaction returns to its original basis, i.e. the ferocity that characterized their

rebellion before society tried to civilize them. Thus, during the last miners strike in GreatBritain, strikers made use of criminal forms of action that are reminiscent of the punitiveexpeditions to which English workers abandoned themselves at the beginning of the 19thcentury. The very ones to which Engels referred in The Situation of the Working Class inEngland, that is to say, before trade unionism had civilized the poor and crushed theirrage.

Fanatics of the Apocalypse

In Heysel, people going to see a soccer match of some importance did not have specificreasons for dissatisfaction. On the contrary, they basically went to have a fine evening.The organizers of the spectacle never imagined that the misery of the crowd couldexplode like this inside the stadium. They had said that there was no reason for violence.In Heysel, the spectacle had to demonstrate its function of manipulation of the lonelycrowds, in live broadcast, play-by-play, to millions of people, at the very moment thatthis manipulation escaped from their hands. In live broadcasts, the rulers lost theirheads. And the thing that shocked spectators so much was not the thirty-eight deaths,but the fact that they witnessed such violence on a live broadcast, that the spectaclewasnt able to spare them this time. They were embarrassed that they had seen it. Thescandal was so great that in West Germany they simply blocked the press report. A

journalist from Le Mondeasked in dismay, in an article about the affair, What effectmight all this have among black African people upon whom we once tried to impose ourcivilization? (The match was broadcast live to several African countries.) Since thattime, we have seen a reggae concert in Guinea take a turn for the worse due to the

excitement of the spectators who finally destroyed the show facilities. During the sameperiod, in Greece, concert organizers gave orders to security guards to play with the soleaim of calming the riotous crowd. Even so, the crowd treated the singers as wickedservants incapable of relieving the dissatisfaction and broke everything. Wild ones areeverywhere in the world.

The mere fact that we came to the defense of hooligans against slander and repressioncaused scandal everywhere, even among people close to us. The arguments that havebeen used against us all originate from the same moral judgment that sees only anirrational and gratuitous violence in these actions. There are no gratuitous acts in thisworld; there are those who learn this at a great price. Hooliganism is an immediateexpression of dissatisfaction that is not at all surprising after a week of boredom and

work. Misery is always somewhat shameful, somewhat sacrilegious, to reformists. Firstof all they dont understand what everyday misery really is, and therefore they dont


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Our program is very old: to live without dead time. We propose to make it knownthrough scandal; there are no other means worthy of such a program. Our existenceitself is already a scandal. We are clearly not indispensable, but on many occasions wehave had to be so. In social war, no one can be exonerated. We are also very suspicious experience shows that one is never sufficiently so. Distrust is never enough. Distrustis judged by the trust that is placed apart from what we call the world of work, since

we have escaped from this very world. But when struggles deserving of the name takeplace, they are against the world of work and unleash a rage against that which forcesthe poor to work, the need for money.

We explain the fact that there are no other groups like us in Europe at this time with thisthought: we are simply the first. Of course, our writings have a negligible distributionwhen compared with our enormous ambitions. But we count on the strength of spirit ofour readers to pose a remedy for this, and this does not call our ambition into question.The distribution of our writings obviously has nothing to do with the massive, dailydistribution of lies in the press. If few people read our writings, they are addressed topotential correspondents, not to a mass of spectators. Better to have selected andcombative people with us than amorphous masses. This favors our enormous ambitions.

We are against all hierarchy and consider our association egalitarian insofar as everyoneis capable of making decisions within it. The fact that we make reference to intellectualslike Marx and Hegel doesn't bother us: in their time one could be an intellectual withoutbeing an intellectual whore; now this isn't possible anymore. Furthermore, they were not

just intellectuals in that they had an effect on reality. We consider it possible to havecontinuous contact with other groups on this basic condition: that it goes beyond everyform of agitation-propaganda in the way it goes into action. What we criticize in politicsis the state.

We must bring something new to this epoch, and we even have the means for doing so.When we met at various times with some striking miners in Great Britain, they asked usthese elementary questions: What force do you really constitute? What can you do with

the information we give you? We need to be able to answer such questions clearly,especially since not everyone can understand a group like ours. In Poland they askedthis as well: But who are you then? What is your movement? We need to be able todemonstrate the universal nature of our existence. The interest we have in the revolts ofthose like us goes beyond the interest that an isolated poor person, without means, hasfor the world. Although we occupy ourselves with what interests us, it is quite clear thatwe do not intend, in any case, to furnish aid to other people's struggles. We merelyintend to meet people and take part in their joy. Most of the rebel workers that we meetare influenced by the militant attitude that comes out of the former workers' movement.In the current state of things, we can count on having encounters with individuals ontheir own, but sometimes we also get in contact with various organized groups that stillhold to some illusions about unionism, with rebel workers. Though the activism of these

groups leaves us indifferent, we know people in these groups who are quite close to usdue to their refusal of work. Young people of the urban outskirts are in the habit ofmeeting isolated people or those who have come together in local gangs; when theymeet us, they are always a bit surprised to see a well-formed and organized group. Onthe other hand, when workers in struggle, who are in the habit of seeing people who actas members of an official organization, meet us, they marvel at seeing individuals whoseem to act on their own. In Great Britain and Spain, many workers in revolt havecontinued to be amazed to see a group of those unemployed for life, that is organized,with contacts and information on an international scale, and capable of making use ofcertain means for being independent of any political or union apparatus. In the end, wearouse the interest of others through our very existence.

In every way, the only serious risk that we incur is that of dying of poverty.


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OS CANGACEIROS

Chapter 3. Prisoners Talking Blues

It is impossible to separate the fate reserved for prisoners inside the walls from the

conditions reserved more generally for the mass of poor people in society. This is whatthe wave of uprisings of May 1985 has shown, uprisings carried forward especially by theaccused awaiting judgment and developed solely in judiciary prisons. The penitentiariesdid not stir, but among the prisoners awaiting judgment, quite a few are certain to besentenced to long punishments and will end up there. The majority of the insurgentsare part of the category of the accused who will end up being sentenced to at least asmuch time as they have already served before sentencing. These are petty criminalswho we have the greatest chance of meeting outside. The revolt that resounds inside theprison walls is a continuation of the one that resounds outside, in the neighborhoods onthe outskirts, and is a consequence of its repression.

In France, 1985, only prisoners have still continued to have rebellious hearts and spirit.

Those on the outside who still avoid the general annihilation recognize themselves, dueto the force of circumstances, in the rebellion of the prisoners. Due to the contents ofthis revolt, they can only attribute a universal significance to it. One thing is indeedcertain, the revolt against prison is now flaring up on the outside as well.

The wave of revolt was directed in the same way against prison and justice. Up to thattime, prisoners attacked the penitentiary institution; now they also attack the judiciaryinstitution. Before they rebelled against the execution of punishment, now they alsoprotest against the way in which they are treated by a society whose general interest isrepresented by justice. Supporters of the state consider the insubordination of prisonersmore dangerous, the more it threatens to blow up the entire system of law, which

constitutes the keystone of the state apparatus and the safety valve of bourgeoissociety. This is why it was logical that prisoners' revolt would find an echo outside.

Tour aim is not exactly that of supporting on the outside the demands formulated insidefor the improvement of some details of the prison regime. It is not that we turn up ournose at such demands, since we know how things go in prison. Above all, we seek tofight against the idea of imprisonment itself. We want to succeed in the destruction ofthese damned institutions. Therefore, we can encourage and take up every sort ofdemand that contains the only vital demand: Air!

Being among those who risk prison, we completely reject its fatality.

For us, poor people who aspire to practical wealth, it is difficult to find words to expressour rebellion and our aspirations in a clear way i.e., works for understanding eachother. The enemy's strategy is two-fold: making sure that the poor are distracted fromquestions of primary necessity and go to tilt at windmills, and in the way preventingthem from meeting and discovering common tensions.

The majority of explanations that one is permitted to hear about the prisoners' revolt arefalse simply because they speak the language of the state, the law. The function of thischattering is so that the poor, in the case prisoners, are no longer even able to find thewords necessary to express their dissatisfaction and rebellion, so that they are not ableto dialogue, because they only know how to express themselves in the language of theirmasters. The aim of the supporters of the state and the defenders of the present society

is to cause the poor to no longer know how to talk unless they are addressing theirmasters. Anyone who speaks the language of rights speaks to the state and only to the


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state. When prisoners start challenging the justice of which they have been the object,prison ceases to be suffered as a fatality.[4]Leftist educators who try to justifydelinquents, finding some excuse for their crimes, just make us sneer with scorn. One isalready forced to justify oneself as a defendant before the judge (besides, it isunderstood that if one tries to explain oneself too much one ends up losing, the samething that happens when one is stopped by the police). And perhaps it is still necessary

to be justified as prisoners! The rebels know that they have no admissible reasons fromthe point of view of those who judge them. Before the state, silence is truly the weaponof the poor.

In prison, there are all kinds of individuals. But prisoners are most of all delinquents thatsociety has decided to isolate. The term delinquency should not lend itself to confusion.It is chronically used to describe a set of behaviors that share the ephemeral shatteringof social restraints and contempt for the law as well as other people's property. Societyuses this term to identify the youth who goes dancing on Saturday night in order tofight, the housewife who steals at the supermarket, the kid who turns into a robber, theworker who takes materials away from his factory, or who, more directly, sees no way tosurvive but to steal all the people who, on varying levels, it can no longer completely

integrate. It is a time in which work and the law are no longer sacred in the eyes ofmany poor people.

Delinquent, from the Latin delinquere, to take away (as one's due), de linquere, toleave out. Delinquent XIV, from the present participle delinquens. Delinquency XX.(Larousse Etymologique).

If the individual has rights, it is because she has duties. If she fails in these, she cannotseriously demand her rights in society and before the state. Except in view of repentanceon her part, paying her debt (in a specific fashion, by working for a few coins whilesuffering her punishment) and giving evidence of her desire for rehabilitation (by havingconditional or partial liberty, the individual is judged a second time, this time on the

basis of her concrete desire for rehabilitation). If she decides to work for rehabilitation,she can hope to be exempted from a portion of the misfortune that strikes prisoners,conserving whatever effective right. The state understood quite quickly, since the firstuprisings of 1971 and 1974, that it was not necessary to isolate imprisoned individualscompletely from civil society. If necessary, it forces the condemned to earn the right toreenter it anew. This is not the least despicable thing!

Anyway, civil society already has its entrances into prisons: prisoners often work. But itenters prisons on the basis of the particular methods reserved for socially unworthyindividuals. Since prisoners are outside of the mechanisms of integration into thissociety, the rate of exploitation of their labor can be permitted to be especially high, andtheir wages especially low.

All sorts of people claim to be interested in the insubordination of prisoners. Many ofthem, the reformists, demand that society acknowledge the prisoners' assertion of theirrights. But what are these rights? Rights of defense? But these only apply to the objectof judgment, not to the execution of the sentence. Prison is a closed universe in whichthere can be no place for contradictory debate. Human rights and citizens' rights?

Human rights are the recognized privileges and safeguards of the atomized individual ofbourgeois society, in which there is room for only two kinds of individual: those whomake money and those who work. How could we, who do not enrich society but rathercost it money, think of benefiting from these privileges and safeguards? By virtue ofwhat social activity in which we could take pride?
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Citizens' rights? The citizen is the political individual, i.e., an abstract individual. Theprisoner is not a citizen.

On the one hand, there is the effective member of bourgeois society, the isolated andlimited individual that this society considers the essence of the human being. On theother hand, there is the moral person, the citizen. It is important to distinguish,methodologically, between the moral person (the accused, the condemned) and the realindividual who is imprisoned. Here the member of society is the individual who has notfulfilled her duties toward the rules that society has democratically established; themoral person is the accused, who is given the honor of recognizing a right to defense.The accused is a citizen.

As judged and condemned, nothing remains to him except to suffer his fate, in prison.He cannot then take advantage of any right, since he doesn't contribute to the wealth ofsociety with any work (except for that which he is obligated to perform, forced bypoverty and regulation). The state is logical when it refuses to permit the possibility ofprisoners' unions. It only offers one road to prisoners: this is to pass through its hell onearth; enduring; accepting punishment, suffering and humiliation, in silence and

completely mending their ways through prison labor. Secular in theory, religious inpractice, justice and the prison system are made in the image and likeness of thebourgeois class. Rehabilitation from that hell on earth is granted to the prisoner whopasses through it in silence, without having anything to say, neither raising his voice,nor complaining, much less protesting. The Christian ideal is still interiorized by manypeople in prison.

The worst thing that one must endure in prison is this feeling of complete dependence onthe rules, clearly aimed at taming the individual. Prison has a semblance of re-education; it is school and barracks at the same time (as is very obvious, for example,in England, and even more in the sadly famous camps of some stalinist countries). The

jailers' abuse of authority is just an expression of the authority of the regulations. In this

sense, the state tries to completely recuperate a few individuals over whom, at a certainpoint, the control of civil society did not serve adequately; therefore it needs to imposerules on them by force. In this sense, the prison evokes the barracks, where theindividual ends up being bent to the primary rules of society, obedience and discipline.The condition of the soldier and that of the prisoner have this in common: they areindividuals whose fate depends entirely upon the state, to the point of having to sufferthe abuses of hierarchy without complaining. Despite all the privileges and concessionsthe prison administration might concede and it is well known to be rather stingy inthis there will still be spontaneous rebellions of prisoners in the face of regulation.

As for the accused awaiting trail, she has not yet been the object of moral judgment.She is kept in a safe place, completely at the disposal of the state. It can never be

repeated enough that to this extent the condition of the accused is like that of a hostage.Furthermore, it should be mentioned that england, which made French reformists droolwith its habeas corpus, introduced temporary detention into its penal procedures in1980, i.e., when the social war had taken a few steps forward.

One could note in passing that, no matter what the humanitarians of the left claim,prison will always remain a place of absolute unworthiness, as is shown by recentgovernment regulations that try to bypass it for the petty criminal, the one who is notcompletely excluded from society, because for now she has only committed crimes oflittle significance and is capable of reintegrating into the social system thanks to her job.It is up to her, however, to give proof of this by carrying out X hours of work in thegeneral interest.


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Whatever the specific reasons for the revolts may be, they will not be exhausted in anyreform or improvement of details, because in prison it is always necessary to demandthe smallest thing that one could work out for oneself on the outside. And in such adesolate universe, the smallest thing takes on an enormous importance and can furnishthe occasion for a rebellion; the occasions will never be lacking. It is understood that theprison administration is able to impose calm for a time, as a consequence of repression

combined with some improvements, but the calm is not destined to last for long.

This social critique of rights could only arise from inside the prison since, even thoughjustice condemns individuals one by one, the fate of each one being her own privateaffair, it then locks them all up together. And it is there that the conditions are createdfor a revolt directed specifically against the authority of the prison administration, theconditions of imprisonment, and more generally against a social system that is based onprison. It is from there, and in relation to this collective rebellion, that a movement canemerge outside that not only recognizes itself in this human protest, but extends itsdevelopment, something that is not in one-sided opposition to the consequences, butrather in open conflict with the presuppositions of the state itself.

Workers in struggle can fight to demand a wage increase. In the same way, prisonerscan manage to obtain reductions in punishment through their actions. Prisoners don'tstruggle for a general reform of prison conditions, just as workers on strike don't concernthemselves with a reform of work. They leave those concerns to union bureaucrats. Theonly thing that prisoners in revolt can reasonably demand within the limits of theexisting system is a bit of air. Reforms are made anyway, always in order to quench thesmoldering fire. What has been obtained for improving the prison regime has alwayscome at the end of a test of strength with the state. Prisoners also know from experiencethat the advantages extracted under the threat of the worst are often quicklytransformed into a further disgrace once calm has returned.

The insubordination of prisoners always takes on the character of a universal threat

since it has to do with individuals who have been locked up in the name of the generalinterest of society. This is what transforms it into a significant political event every time.Each wave of rebellion leads to some project of reform of the laws and codes.

The left, which had promised to modify the entire prison regime, hasn't even riskedtrying it. Once it came into power, it immediately understood that if it had done so, itwould have been playing with fire. There is no improvement possible in the regime ofimprisonment except that of granting air to prisoners. The left knows that the smallesopening risks provoking disorder. Any type of government is sure to have hassles withprison. No matter what side one takes it from, he ends up getting his hands dirty.

The notion of general interest is at the center of the entire system of legal rights against

which the rebels fight. The state and its supporters continually refer back to this generalinterest, in contrast to the latent state of war that rages in real society. They are able tomake people identify themselves with this supposed general interest, to the extent that,in the France of 1985, any line of demarcation between the poor and civil society seemsto be erased, and delinquency often takes its victims from among the poor. On the onehand, the places where money and goods always circulate in abundance are beingtransformed more and more into impregnable fortresses; on the other hand, theconditions to which those who work must submit are becoming more and moreintolerable. Decidedly harsher conditions arise from this for those poor people who don'twork, increasing the isolation of each one in her search for money (and the spread ofheroin among the youth aggravates this process even more). The state and thebourgeoisie erect a system of military defense of private property, of the circulation of

money and commodities, unleashing at the same time the war of all against all, the


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fiercest conflict of isolated interests. The authority of the state thus finds its basis againin the confused hostility that reigns over society in its totality.

Then the prisoners' revolt appears as a possibility for overcoming this state of affairs.The protest against justice and prison crystallizes the general interest of all the poor,subdued by necessity and what they must bear under various forms, the repressionpracticed in the name of the general interest of society.

Solidarity with the revolts doesn't appeal to sentiment any more than it speaks to so-called public opinion. We have simply wanted to speak to the prisoners. And the fact thattheir rebellion has been strong enough to find such a response outside is not the least ofits merits.

Yves Delhoysie

Chapter 4. Freedom Is the Crime That Contains All Crimes

We have many friends in prison; we ourselves have been among the fucked jailbirds.This is why we have felt the wave of revolt, which began on Sunday, May 5 with themutiny of a part of Fleury-Mrogis, coming for some time.

Prisoners could no longer tolerate the crap to which prison guards more and more openlydedicate themselves. Two specific events were probably too much:

In March, the murder of Bruno Sulak by guards after a failed escape. The liars that talkon television and write in newspapers have presented it as an accident, despite the factthat a few guards in Fleury have bragged about killing him.

At the beginning of April, a guard was punched during an escape attempt at a prison inLyons. His colleagues responded by proclaiming a strike. A few days later, still in Lyons,some prisoners reacted to this arrogance by beating two of these shits. A national strikeof all prison guards followed this. It further aggravated the unbearable conditions byeliminating the hour of air, visits and leaves (multiplying the discomforts, daily vexationsand beatings that were already part of ordinary administration).

Those who speak to us of overcrowding in the prisons are the very ones who have filledthem until they burst! Obviously they are turning the question upside down. For us, it isnot a question of building more prisons, but of emptying those that already exist.

The need of prisoners in revolt is obvious: freedom! They don't negotiate this with theprison administration, but rather start to take it for themselves: climbing up on the roofis freedom snatched from the state. Let's take air, they exclaim. For a few hours theycan chat, protected from indiscreet ears, dialogue with their comrades outside over thewalls, insult and throw roof tiles at the dirty skunks who oppress them, and finally talkabout themselves. Here they are, the real free conversations!

The prison administration and the media attribute the revolt of Fleury-Mrogis to ahandful of political militants (specifically ofAction Directe) who, preoccupied with theirnotoriety, have always participated in this lie, not stopping these statements. All theseliars had already done the same thing during the hunger strike proclaimed in Fleury atthe end of 1984. Let's abandon the militants to their lying, wooden language...

But there has been real solidarity among prisoners (at Bois D'Arcy, prisoners in the cellswere ready to wreck everything if those on the roof were evicted. This is why theGIGN[5]did not intervene and the others were able to remain in the open air for about
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forty hours, fed by their comrades in confinement. Meanwhile in Bastia, a hunger strikewas announced in solidarity with the rebels in other prisons). The same solidarity hasbeen expressed outside as well. On May 19 in Montpellier, a group of people lined up onthe side of the prisoners in revolt and attacked the cops from behind. The cops dispersedthem by unleashing dogs on them. The main concern of the prisoners has been that ofcommunicating with the outside, shouting their protests against imprisonment, the daily

terror that is exercised against them. They want to kill us. They gas us, they cudgelus. These are the things that could be read on the banners at Bois d'Arcy.

Prisoners take an enormous risk when they rebel. Everyone knows beforehand that theprison administration will immediately make them pay dearly for this: with custodialsentences, the suppression of sentence reductions[6], transferals, beatings, murdersdisguised as suicides. In Douai, three prisoners (one of whom was supposed to bereleased in June) had climbed onto the roof and demonstrated their rebellion bythrowing down roof tiles. As soon as the came down, an emergency tribunal condemnedthem to 15 months and 6 months additional time without parole. This sentence wasintended to be exemplary.

The anxiety engendered by repressive terror, and the despair of returning to theoppressive isolation of the prison, are so present even in the moment of rebellion thatsome of the prisoners turned against themselves, mutilating themselves. In Fleury andMontpellier, some prisoners took possession of some barbiturates and gulped themdown, smashing everything in their path. Twenty-five of them were seriously poisoned.Others slashed their wrists, calling on their comrades to do likewise. One of them died.Meanwhile several prisoners in different yards hanged themselves. At this very moment,in St. Paul in Lyons, some prisoners try to mutilate or hang themselves every day.

Freedom is the crime that contains all crimes, and it is against this crime that the oldworld defends itself. The state is physically eliminating all the beautiful young peoplewho aren't resigned the same young people who die, murdered by cops or reactionary

pro-cop vigilantes. The state buries those that the law can trap alive in its prisons aslong as possible while terrorizing those who manage to stay outside. For these, it payseducators and other pests to demoralize them and make them forget their comrades in

jail...

Poor neighborhoods on the outskirts[7]are emptied of their youth, while prisons fill up.This is the secret of overcrowding. The state's lackeys would like us to believe that it is abudgeting problem! Overcrowding is supposed to be caused by a malfunctioning of theprison system, but it is actually a result of the optimal functioning of the judicial system.

Obviously, the only way to deal with overcrowding in prisons is to empty them, as therioters in Fleury maintained on this point they couldn't have been clearer. In a

declaration signed by the six hundred leaders, they opposed the building of newprisons. On the other hand, the prisoners in Montpelier furnished a concrete solution toovercrowding. They destroyed almost all the cells!

The prisoners are rebelling against the justice system and, more specifically, against thekidnapping that is portrayed and preventive detention which officially condemnspeople to an indefinite confinement that is later confirmed if not increased at the trial.Moreover, we are reminded of the movement that sent collective demands forprovisional liberty in Lyons at the beginning of summer in 1984.[8]

As long as there have been prisons, everything prisoners have gotten they conquered byrisking their lives in revolt. In some instances, they were able to impose a breach in theprison regime.
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What prisoners manage to grab by force and at the cost of blood, the prisonadministration later gnaws away again, using improvements of prison conditions as ameans of blackmail.

The guards have the task of persecuti8ng the least bit of freedom in every gesture ofdaily life. The deprivation of freedom is refined every day in the constant, sadistic abuseof these pigs. In prison, freedom is even the choice to remain seated, asleep or standingwhen one wants to.

Since the time of Peyrefitte and Badinter[9], if the state proposes a program of reform,it is solely to prevent the risk of an explosion and certainly not for humanitarian reasons.

Prisoners no longer demand reform; they have suffered its reality. The application ofeach reform depends on the good will of the prison administration and the guards. Whatwas presented as a benefit becomes a further degradation.

Free conversations are even refused by some, because what one has to submit to in

order to get these visits is so humiliating.

Though in appearance the death penalty has been abolished and no longer is part of thelegal code, it has in fact become more common and democratized. It is now carried outby a mob of reactionary vigilantes and cops, while in prisons the guards do it.

In the same way, the suppression of the QHS (maximum security wings) was ahumanitarian bluff (supported by the left). The best example of this opportunisticattitude was when they used a humanitarian campaign to release Knobelpiess, who haddenounced the horrors of the QHS, and then, when they were done using him, did nothesitate to lock him back up.[10]

As a special regime of isolation, the QHS was never suppressed. They simply changedthe name. It is now called QI (isolation quarters). In 1983, a new prison called LesGodets opened near Nevers. It is intended for imprisoning convicts who are consideredparticularly dangerous. It can hold eighty prisoners in an extremely harsh surveillanceregime.

Furthermore, the administration and the guards want to extend QHS conditions to theentirety of the prison. The number of isolation cells has increased. The DPS (speciallywatched prisoner) statute is applied more and more. Punishment cells are increasinglyfilled. With greater frequency, the prison administration reserves the right to inflict morespecial punishments and sanctions on the basis of the tension that reigns in prison.Abuse and beatings are the order of the day. It drives prisoners to suicide or allows

murder to pass for suicide. There are no natural deaths in prison; those who succumb,die of prison. Murder is called accidental death like Mohammed Rhabi in Rouen andBruno Sulak in Fleury, who guards killed during an escape attempt; like Alain Pinol inFresnes, killed by the cops. Prisoners' suicides are all murders committed by the prisonadministration that gladly provides you with the rope for hanging yourself. And if thereare more and more suicides (at least twenty since the beginning of the year), it meansthat living conditions inside are increasingly intolerable.

An additional pressure is exercised against condemned immigrants. Along with prison,they can suffer a second penalty: deportation. And it even goes so far that, after havingserved their sentence, they continue to rot in prison for months before the deportationprocedures are completed.
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To finish with Badinter's famous reforms, his latest gift, the TIF [a work programmentioned above] has been a fine load of shit. One can already predict that new accusedprisoners awaiting trial will quickly fill the cells emptied by the TIG. This modern versionof forced labor is not at all preferable to prison so little so that some of thoseconvicted have refused it.

All those who demand rights in prison (prisoner's unions) are far behind the prisoners'movement of revolt, because prisoners can only impose their demands through violence,risking their own lives. Union battles will be carried out within the law and through thelaw, by prosecuting all abuses before the qualified authorities: this is the program ofprisoner's unions...

We have already seen what unions are on the outside. They only serve to channel anddomesticate people's rebellion, in reforms aimed at prettifying misery. Furthermore, theyare used to stifle the real demands that the poor spontaneously think up in theirstruggle.

Prisoners no longer fight for reforms that they now know were mere illusions. Ratherthan placing themselves on the abstract terrain of rights, they can demand somethingthat will at least have a concrete result a general reduction of punishments.

It's a question of demanding:

A Reduction Of Punishments

For All Those Convicted.

The Release Of All Prisoners Awaiting Trial.

The Definitive Stopping Of All

Deportation Measures.

And, of course,

The Cancellation Of All Sanctions

Against The Rebels

The demand for the release of those awaiting trial is more than a specific demandrelating to prison. It is not so much addressed to the state or the prison administration,as to all the poor for whom preventive detention is a sword of Damocles hanging overtheir heads every day. It is a challenge launched against this society that resounds in theminds of all those who have decided not to submit.

Judicial and prison questions almost always remain private matters in which each one ispowerless in his isolation. Both the one on the inside, awaiting her trial, and the oneoutside, who has a friend in prison and can often do nothing more than to help outfinancially or pay her a visit. The rebels have put forth some practical demands that aim,at the minimum, at getting the greatest number of people out. These demands form aprisoners' offensive against their isolation and an appeal to those on the outside to actconcretely to break it. It's a question of bringing pressure to bear against this society, ofshitting on this world with its prisons that would prefer not to hear about them.

OS CANGACEIROS


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Beginning of June 1985

Chapter 5. The Truth About Some Actions Carried Out InSupport Of the Prison Revolts

For the first time in this rotten country, a movement of concrete solidarity with prisonersin revolt has appeared on the outside. This was a twist of fate that neither the reformersnor the complainers those who believe that they can shamelessly make use of thesuffering of prisoners to justify their cowardice and their interest in maintaining thestatus quo ever expected. Above all, it was a cruel trick against the state.

On the outside, there is a mass of imbeciles who allow themselves to flap their lips,endlessly debating about what they modestly call the problem of detention, eventhough they don't have the least bit of personal experience in the matter and would dobetter to shut their trap. Their pre

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